The cooler heads speak out

The Rev. Al Sharpton raises his hands with the crowd during a service for the Michael Brown family at the Greater Grace Church in Ferguson, Mo. on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014. On Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, a white police officer fatally shot Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in the St. Louis suburb. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Christian Gooden)

At the Greater St. Mark’s Family church in Ferguson, Missouri, the town where an unarmed Michael Brown was shot last week, a small crowd of about 50 heard State Attorney General Chris Koster apologize.

“You have lost a member of your community at the hands of a member of my community. Not just the Caucasian community, but the law enforcement community,” said Koster.

He said the rioting in the last week represented 50 years of pent up anger.

“And I am sorry that I have not done more in the law enforcement community to break down that wall of anger,” said Koster.f

Basically saying white people and the police have not done enough to understand the frustration of black people.
Then it was Al Sharpton’s turn, pointing out that in a town where 67 percent of the citizens are black, only three members of the police force and zero members of the elected school board are black.

And Sharpton knows people are mad, “But the flip side of that is that some of y’all that are mad today would not vote. People died to give you the right to vote. And you showed up on election day too lazy to go to the polls. Leadership cuts both sides. They’ve got to open up and you’ve got to get up.”

The audience – and the band – seemed to agree. So in Ferguson, as in all the other flashpoints in the world, the cooler heads do exist. The question once again is whether there are enough of them to prevail.